Stocks are higher this morning as tax reform looks more likely. Bonds and MBS are flat.

Initial Jobless Claims fell 2,000 last week to 238,000.

Personal incomes rose 0.4% in October and personal spending rose 0.3%. The savings rate ticked up to 3.2%. Inflation remains in check, with the core rate rising 0.2% MOM and 1.4% YOY. It probably won’t make any difference to the Fed, which is pretty much set to hike interest rates next month for the second time this year.

The core PCE (the inflation measure preferred by the Fed) has been pretty much below the Fed’s target for almost a decade, except for a blip in 2012.

Tax reform has begun debate and some hope to see a vote in the Senate tonight. One of the biggest sticking points is the idea of a trigger, which would increase taxes if there is a revenue shortfall. We have had all sorts of spending triggers before (the Medicare “doc fix” is the classic one), but they invariably get ignored. Here is the issue with a revenue trigger. Suppose the US enters a recession, and revenues fall (as they almost always do). The bill would require the government to hike taxes in response, which is exactly the wrong thing to do as it adds another drag to the economy. In other words, it would never happen. Again, I am skeptical that such a large undertaking could be done on a tight timeline without much debate, but you never know.

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“The case for normalizing impeachment
Impeaching an unfit president has consequences. But leaving one in office could be worse.
Updated by Ezra Klein
Nov 30, 2017, 6:00am EST

In recent months, I have grown obsessed with a seemingly simple question: Does the American political system have a remedy if we elect the wrong person to be president? There are clear answers if we elect a criminal, or if the president falls into a coma. But what if we just make a hiring mistake, as companies do all the time? What if we elect someone who proves himself or herself unfit for office — impulsive, conspiratorial, undisciplined, destructive, cruel?”

I spend a lot of time with Trump voters (yeah, it’s Texas). Most of these people are completely non-political, but Trump invariably comes up in a sort of parallel context of what Juicer’s saying. Essentially, everything that juicer said about Trump was said and believed by these people about Obama. The anger at the Republican establishment is less about any legislative accomplishments to date and more about their failure to remove, or at least attempt to remove Obama from office. Trump is their answer to Obama and the Republican failure to stop him.

This is a bizarre and ongoing masturbatory fantasy by numerous people, including those that should know better, on the left. The road to removing Trump from office is so long as to be impossible. Of all the strategies they could pursue, that’s the most fantastic, imaginary one. Yet they keep writing about it.

“CFTC Approves Bitcoin Futures Even as It Cautions on Risks of Cryptocurrencies
CME Group says it will require an initial margin of 35% for its bitcoin futures contracts that will start trading on Dec. 18